I recently discovered Rosetta@Home and Fold it.   They are both ways anyone can help with protein folding.  I’m no expert on proteins, but according to the site protein folding helps scientists to better understand proteins which can aide in curing diseases.  Which is pretty darn cool 🙂

Rosetta@Home works by using your computer’s idle resources to fold proteins in the background, it has various settings that let you tell when and how much of your CPU Rosetta@Home can use so it doesn’t interfere with other tasks.  Rosetta@Home can also be set as your screen saver so whenever your system idles you can watch it fold proteins.  It also logs your progress and you can collect “credits” which it displays on the site and if you get enough you could end up on their leader boards.

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Fold it is a lot more hands on.  It’s like a 3D puzzle game, and I was very impressed with the renderings and how all the tools worked.  You can collect points and find your way to the leader boards in this application too.  It’s a free game that could help cure cancer – what’s not to like?

http://fold.it/